1. Field
This field is generally related to network routing.
2. Related Art
A communication network may, for example, provide a network connection that allows data to be transferred between two geographically remote locations. A network connection may span multiple links with different capacities. Networks may have different topologies depending on how the links are connected to each other through routing devices.
Depending on the network topology, multiple routes may be available for a connection. Traditional routing algorithms rely on local information each router has from its surroundings to route data. A router maintains the information about its neighboring connections in a routing table. Based on the destination address of an incoming packet, a router uses its routing table to forward the packet to a neighboring router.
While using only local information and the packet destination for routing may be desirable in some contexts, it may not always route data intelligently. For example, it may result in bottlenecks. For that reason, other techniques use the global knowledge of the network topology to route packets. Such global knowledge can provide an optimum route based on the current traffic load in different parts of the network. This approach also enables connections to balance their traffic loads on multiple parallel connections, if necessary.